Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand addressed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday in New York City, pledging to “lead other middle powers,” as the foundation of a “new international order” is laid.
Anand said that “great powers are [...] dismantling economic integration [and] want the rest of us to accept what we are offered.” She said Ottawa will continue to forge “issue-based coalitions” with “small states, middle powers, and great powers alike,” noting Canada’s role in setting up a new 23-member group, Partners for Multilateralism, to help reform the UN and other multilateral institutions. (Australia and India are the only Indo-Pacific countries in that group.)
Anand noted that Ottawa is “building renewed partnerships with large economies like India and China.” Anand’s language is telling: calling the two countries “economies” underlines Ottawa’s overwhelming focus on trade and investment ties.
She added that Ottawa is “offering the Dark Vessel Detection program to our partners,” the benefits of which were on display this week. On Monday, the Philippine Coast Guard, using the Canada-supplied technology, accused a Chinese vessel of purposefully broadcasting a false location.
The vessel’s transponder relayed that it was in Papua New Guinea, when, in reality, it was inside the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, more than 2,000 nautical miles away.
Echoes of Davos
Most speakers at the UNGA from the Indo-Pacific seemed to agree with elements of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s diagnosis at Davos — that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons” and that “the old order is not coming back.”
Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae said that “the ‘stable post-Cold War era’ is now a thing of the past.” India’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, said that “what we are seeing is a weaponization of everything.” South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called on countries to move beyond “rivalry, deadlock, and fragmentation.”
Lee also pitched a “Partnership of Constructive Contributors,” a nascent grouping designed to protect energy supply chains. This proposal, paired with the new Partners for Multilateralism (and even the Coalition of the Willing), shows that countries are increasingly open to short-term, ad hoc partnerships built outside of traditional fora.
Carney and Finnish President Alexander Stubb alluded to this trend in a July op-ed in The Economist, writing that “dynamic, purpose-built coalitions will be increasingly formed around shared interests, rather than a single shared institution.” Carney’s expected attendance at summits for ASEAN, APEC, La Francophonie, and the G20 this fall presents more opportunities for coalition-building.
